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Thursday, 15 January 2015

We reap what we sow

|| योग: कर्मसु कौशलम् ||

Hunger is but natural. But you are a human being and you have been given choice of selection, of free will. Unless one takes up proper choice, the golden opportunity that we have got as a human being would go futile. Mananeeya Eknathji expresses this saying : Every individual has his hunger for spiritual awakening. If this awakening is there, then a man truly becomes Man. As Swami Vivekananda has once remarked in one of his speeches, unless there is such an awakening, an individual continues to be a child only. At the most, he can be a grown-up baby, but he is not a human being, even though he may have added years to his life. With all the crude hungers, he continues to be an animal, perhaps a rational animal but not a man. Swamiji had said : "Realise in your own life this knowledge of Brahman which comprehends all theories and is the rationale of all truths, and preach it to the world. This will conduce to your own good and the good of others as well. I have told you today the essence of all truths; there is nothing higher than this." (Diary of a Disciple - Vol VII - page 97)In yet another speech, Swamiji said :We see in this life that we can shape and form our future; every one of us, every day, is trying to shape the morrow. Today we fix the fate of the morrow; tomorrow we shall fix the fate of the day after, and so on. It is quite logical that this reasoning can be pushed backward too. If by our own deeds we shape our destiny in the future, why not apply the same rule to the past? If, in an infinite chain, a certain number of links are alternately repeated, then, if one of these groups of links be explained, we can explain the whole chain. So, in this infinite length of time, if we can cut off one portion and explain that portion and understand it, then, if it be true that nature is uniform, the same explanation must apply to the whole chain of time. If it be true that we are working out our own destiny here within this short space of time, if it be true that everything must have a cause as we see it now, it must also be true that that which we are now is the effect of the whole of our past; therefore, no other person is necessary to shape the destiny of mankind but man himself. The evils that are in the world are caused by none else but ourselves. We have caused all this evil; and just as we constantly see misery resulting from evil actions, so can we also see that much of the existing misery in the world is the effect of the past wickedness of man. Man alone, therefore, according to this theory, is responsible. God is not to blame, He, the eternally merciful Father, is not to blame at all. "We reap what we sow." (Vol II, The Atman - page 242)

And therefore, Mananeeya Eknathji says : One must realize the goal of human life and must stand face to face with it. It is the destiny of man. Birth after birth he arrives and goes back and again returns but he does not become a real adult unless he has the experience of that awakening, at least that awakening only. Without the knowledge of this goal, our life is only an aimless wandering.

Let our efforts be in this direction is the advice that Eknathji gives to all karyakartas.